There Is A River
by Theophila
Summary: “Oh, Ed! You’re still awake, then?” came his sister’s voice. “Yes,” said Edmund, and he opened his eyes and sat up. “And you? What are you doing up so late?” A pre-Dawn Treader discussion about guilt, worth, and the love that saves us from ourselves.


Disclaimer: By now, the term 'disclaimer' ought to be self-explanatory, I think. -winks-

**There Is A River**

Edmund was attempting, rather uncomfortably and unsuccessfully, to sleep in the lumpy bed that had been provided for him at his aunt's house. He wasn't the sort to usually have much trouble falling asleep, even in unfamiliar places, because he had had plenty of experience with that as a king in Narnia during foreign diplomatic visits and such. But then, in Narnia he had usually been sharing a room with his brother, or if not Peter, then one of his sisters. The good company had always made up for any unpleasant rooming issues. Unfortunately, this time Edmund was not quite so lucky. Peter was at the Professor's house studying, Susan was in America, and he and Lucy were stuck (in separate rooms, too) in the home of an ornery aunt who, Edmund was sure, no amount of diplomacy would ever be able to placate. Aunt Alberta and Uncle Harold were a bit strange, to be sure—teetolaers, non-smokers, and wearers of unorthodox underclothing—but Edmund wouldn't have held it against them if it wasn't for how stuck-up and snooty they were about it. And then, besides this, there was the problem of Eustace. Edmund always had the tendency to be a bit snarky, but he usually was able to quash his sarcastic impulses in favor of politeness when necessary. During conversations with Eustace, Edmund had attempted sarcasm-quashing and failed miserably. (He probably would have been able to keep up the polite façade if it wasn't for Eustace making fun of Lucy, but when their cousin was mean to his sister, he just couldn't put up with it.) Dealing with obnoxious relatives all day had made Edmund tired and irritable, and now that he finally had the opportunity to sleep, he wasn't able to. It was much too cold for any reasonable person to be able to fall asleep, because all the windows in the house were perpetually opened wide, and it was forbidden to close them for any reason (except sometimes if it was raining, very, very hard. But only sometimes.). There were very few clothes on the bed, and even wearing a sweater over his pajamas, Edmund was freezing.

Letting out a grunt of frustration, Edmund turned and changed positions in his bed for what must have been the 17th time within the hour. He was busy glaring at the open window when he heard the floor creaking down the hall. Slow, careful footsteps, too—someone was trying very hard to be quiet. Edmund buried his face in the pillow a little bit and closed his eyes, pretending to be asleep. It didn't take long to realize that the soft footsteps were coming to his door. Lucy. He imagined her, slightly nervous but still hopeful, peering into his room to see if he was awake. He heard her slowly walk to the side of his bed, and then there was a longish period of silence during which he supposed she was squinting at his face to determine whether or not he was awake. Edmund couldn't help from smiling a little: this wasn't the first time this had happened, and so he was somewhat familiar with Lucy's middle-of-the-night-discussion-with-a-sibling techniques. Eyes still closed, he spoke: "Hullo, Lu." Edmund grinned at the responding muffled exclamation of surprise.

"Oh, Ed! You're still awake, then?" came his sister's voice.

"Yes," said Edmund, and he opened his eyes and sat up. "And you? What are you doing up so late?" His little sister was carrying a candle that cast warm golden flickers onto her face and the pink robe she wore. With a pang, Edmund was reminded of another time he'd seen her walking around at night with a candle, a time when she had walked right out of this world into another…and he had followed. But unlike that night (so long ago?), tonight there was a flicker of something deeper and more troublesome in his sister's eyes. Edmund's own eyes became sharper as he asked, gently but seriously, "What's the matter, Lu?" She looked a little hesitant, so he went on to shift himself on the bed to provide a space for her. "Come, sit! Talk and I'll listen, sister."

She smiled and set her candle on the bedside table before joining her brother on the bed. "Thanks, Ed," she said. "I was just… I was just wondering if I could ask you a question." Edmund looked amused and a little nonplussed at this, and Lucy thought he would probably say something along the lines of, "Well, of course, Lu. You do realize you ask me questions all the time?" Instead of giving him the chance to say this, she hurriedly added, "I mean, it's sort of a personal question. A really personal question. And of course, if you don't want to answer it, you don't have to… I don't want to hurt you by making you talk about." Her eyebrows drew a little tighter together just thinking about how horrid it would be to hurt her brother.

Edmund studied his sister's face for a moment before speaking. "Well," he finally said, "I'm fairly certain that whatever you're about to say, I've heard worse. So fire away." He smiled reassuringly. (Lucy made a good effort to return a genuine smile but it was pretty unconvincing. Oh, well.)

Luc y thought for a moment, trying to figure out how to phrase her question in the kindest possible way. Finally she came out with it and asked, "Edmund… what do you when you feel guilty? I mean, about… you know. What happened at the beginning, with... _her_. How do you manage it?" She glanced nervously up at his face, mistook her brother's surprise for offense, and quickly said, "Sorry, sorry! I shouldn't have asked you, I just knew it… I'll go back to my room now. Sorry!"

She began to leave, but Edmund stopped her with a firm hand on her arm and said, "Don't be silly, Lu, it's a perfectly valid question." He smiled at her again, though perhaps with a little more difficulty than before, and said, "I just wasn't expecting that particular question, that's all. I'll willingly tell you the answer, of course… but out of curiosity, why do you ask?"

He could tell from the expression on her face that she didn't really want to answer, but being a very honest, open sort of person, she told him anyway. "It's… it's Susan, you see. Because she's been drifting so far away from us all—I know you've noticed it, and so has Peter, even if he won't admit it yet—and it started ever since we came back from our last trip to Narnia. And—and I think it's because she knows she'll never be able to back home now, and she can't stand it—she can't stand _me_ because I keep reminding her of Narnia! Edmund," she said, and there was a note of desperation in her voice now, "at school, she doesn't even talk to me!"

Edmund felt his sister's anguish, but wasn't quite sure how to comfort her. (Peter and Susan had always been much better than him at this sort of thing.) After a moment of indecision, Edmund settled on awkwardly putting his arm around her shoulder and trying to pat her comfortingly. It wasn't much, but it was something, and it seemed to bring Lucy back from the verge of tears, at least for now. Edmund was glad for this, because he still did not really understand what Susan had to do with Lucy's question.

Lucy swallowed a few times and then gave Edmund a watery smile and finished her explanation. "I know she loves me… but I can't help but think she must hate me, because it's my fault that we ever left Narnia in the first place."

Beside her, Edmund stiffened. He looked at her with skeptic astonishment. "Your fault we left Narnia?"

"Yes!" cried Lucy softly. Her brother's disbelief was lost on her. "And I've been feeling guilty about it—but it was especially bad tonight, and… I just thought you might be able to help!"

He pulled her slightly closer with his arm and gave her a stern look that was full of love. "Yes, yes. I would do anything for you, Lucy, you know that. But before I answer your question… You mustn't feel guilty about taking us out of Narnia. It was you who brought us there in the first place! And," he said very seriously, "if you hadn't led me there, I would still be the awful brat I was back then. We'd all be much less than we were meant to be. So Lucy, if anything, we should be thanking you! I doubt even Susan could ever hate you. She's still our sister, even if she isn't the same as she once was." He frowned for a moment and then abruptly laughed.

"What's so funny?" asked Lucy.

"It's just that _you_ weren't the one to take us out of Narnia anyway, Lu! I remember that day quite clearly, and all of us (except Susan) wanted to go past the lantern, and even Susan agreed to go with us. She said something like, 'let us go on and take the adventure that shall fall to us.'" Edmund let Lucy ponder this for a few seconds before saying, "But now I'll answer your question.

"See, towards the beginning of our reign in Narnia, I felt guilty an awful lot. I was…horrified, I think would be the best word. Horrified at myself, not just because of what I had done—betraying a whole country, betraying my very own siblings—" Edmund paused for a moment and shook his head bitterly. "No, I was more horrified at the implications. What kind of a person was I, I thought, if I was so willing to betray my own family—for sweets? I knew I was a traitor now, but the scary thing was that I wondered, if I was capable of doing something so evil as that in the past, what else might I do in the future? Of course I had no intention of doing such things anymore—not after I met Aslan—but I couldn't help but feel afraid of myself, and hate myself, too."

"Oh, but, Ed!" Lucy objected, very concerned. "You knew we loved you the whole time didn't you?"

Edmund paused and smiled affectionately. "Well, of course, Lu. But you see, that made it even worse. I didn't deserve to be loved, especially not by you or Susan or Peter or Aslan or anyone else in Narnia for that matter. I deserved to die, except I knew that if I did, it would only hurt you, Lucy, and the others. So I just tried to do my best at living and being the best king I knew how, because that seemed to be the only reasonable thing to do. But no matter what I did, it never seemed to be enough to make me pure again, to atone. I don't know... I can't say I was desperately unhappy, really. It's just I wasn't nearly as happy as I ought to have been, because I always had that cloud of guilt hanging over me. And every once in a while I just felt overwhelmed by it."

"I know the feeling," Lucy interjected. Edmund patted her hand sympathetically.

"So things went on like that for a few months, with me feeling perpetually guilty but just trying to make the best of it. Until one day, Peter sent me to fetch you two girls to come to lunch. Remember that special lunch he made that day for us, all by himself? With the grapes?"

"Oh, yes! It was delightful! And I must say it was rather funny when you two pretended to have grapes for eyes, even if Susan did say it was dreadfully bad table manners." Lucy grinned, remembering the happy times, back when even if Susan scolded, she did it good-naturedly and lovingly.

"Yes," said Edmund, smiling back. "Well, I went up to go find you, and you were both in Susan's room. You were being very loud, Lucy, and I could hear you through the door." Edmund suddenly became solemn as he said, "You and Susan were arguing about whether or not I should be told about how… about how Aslan died for me."

Lucy gaped at him with wide, somber, startled eyes. Edmund almost laughed as he said, "Well, I'm sure you must have figured out at some point that I knew! Are you really so surprised as all that?"

His sister seemed to be grasping for words for a moment, until finally she said, "No… I suppose not. I mean, I always sort of had this sneaking suspicion that somehow you knew, even though I wasn't sure how. I just didn't realize that it was my fault you knew. That is to say," she added in a rush, "I thought you might have figured it out some other way. I had wanted to tell you straight-out, really, but Susan thought it would be too painful for you to hear." There was a moment of silence. "Was… was she right?"

"You'd think so," said Edmund, "and for a little bit, it's true: I felt more miserable than ever before. I tried to hide it like always, though I can't imagine how I managed it. I sent a servant to bring you girls to lunch so you wouldn't worry that I had overheard your conversation, and then I went downstairs and fooled around with the grapes and all that. But that night, in my bed, I wept."

"I'm so sorry, Ed!" cried Lucy.

"Hush now," said Edmund gently. "You haven't finished hearing the story. Now, when I finally fell asleep, I had something very like a vivid dream, or maybe it was a vision… I was standing next to this stream, and I've never seen anything like it before or since then, it was so bright! Bright as liquid glass. I was thirsty and the water looked delicious, so I knelt and drank some of it, and then when I looked up, there was _Aslan_—"

"Aslan!"

"Yes! And he was looking at me from across the stream with his huge, golden eyes, and I felt so happy and so wretched all at once that I didn't know what to do. And then he just leaped across the river, and I knelt at his paws because, well, I couldn't think of anything else to do. And I told him I was sorry, so, so, sorry, and that I wouldn't object if he wanted to kill me now because I knew I deserved it."

"What did he say?" asked Lucy, entranced.

Edmund smiled and chuckled a little wetly. (He likely may have been crying a bit, but it was too dark to be sure.) "He laughed. Can you believe it, Lu? I didn't know what to make of it! But then he told me that if he wanted me dead, why would he have died so that I might live? And of course I didn't know what to say to that, so I just stayed kneeling in front of him. But then he stopped laughing, and he looked at me very seriously and said, 'Edmund. My son, you have come farther than most. You have realized and understood that you do not deserve love, and, on your own, there is no way you can.' Lucy, you have no idea how crushing it was for me to hear him say that! My worst fears, confirmed! I could never deserve love, never earn it, never atone. But then he went on and said, 'But Edmund, neither can anyone else. Everyone has been a traitor, Edmund. The Witch singled you out because it would have been pleasing and beneficial to her to see you dead. But every person, every creature, every being you've ever meant has betrayed another at some level, and as you know very well, the just punishment for treason is death. Treason, as you have found, is a vast crime and a near insurmountable mountain, and hardly anything can overcome or atone for it. But Edmund, _just king_, **my love** is much bigger than any evil of yours. And so it does not matter whether or not you deserve to be loved. My love is so big that whether or not you deserve it does not matter in the least. _My love is what makes you worthy._' And—oh, it was so wonderful!—he gave me wild, majestic Lion kisses, and I felt so much love welling up in me that I almost fell over! I might actually have done so, but I can't be sure, because the next thing I knew it was morning and I was back in my bed at the Cair, not at all tired even though I'm not sure I slept at all that night.

"Lucy, I'm not sure how I can still remember every word he said after all these years, but they have stuck with me, and any time I feel guilty I just remember what he said, and that yes, I am guilty on my own, but he—_his love_—has made me worthy. And that's all that matters now." He paused for a moment, and his brow furrowed as he said, "Sometimes, since we've been in this world, when I think about it reminds me of—well. I still need to think about it a little more before I can be really sure."

Edmund took a deep breath and then suddenly remembered to mention, "But, like I said before, we are completely different in this respect, you and I: The guilt I was feeling was real and deserved. But you, my sister, you have no real reason to feel guilty. If Aslan didn't want us to leave Narnia, then he wouldn't have let us. No, we are here because England is where he means for us to be right now. And even if Susan doesn't believe it, I'm sure of it." Lucy had been quiet for a few minutes now, so Edmund abruptly asked, "Are you all right, Lu?"

Lucy buried her face in her brother's shoulder in a warm hug. "Oh, yes, Ed, yes! I'm much better now. Thank you! I… thank you." Edmund graciously said that it was no trouble at all, and whatever else were brother's for, anyway? He was feeling glad, because even though he felt her tears soaking through his pajamas, he could also hear the smile in her voice. And he asked her if she would like to stay in his room tonight, and she quickly accepted the offer.

"You know," said Edmund quietly, just a few minutes later, "you can always come to me when you need to talk about things like this. Or anything really, for that matter. Even if I'm asleep, you can wake me up if it's important."

"Wake you up ? Wake _you_ up?" Lucy shifted so that she could give him a look filled with enough incredulity to make him blush. "Edmund, I told you I was feeling guilty. I didn't say I was suicidal." They grinned at each other—she, teasingly, he, with embarrassment—Edmund was notoriously grumpy when woken from his sleep. "Goodnight, Ed," said Lucy affectionately, and then right before he fell asleep, she added quietly, "And… thank you." And they had a very good night's sleep, despite the cold.

_There is a river that washes you clean  
There is a tree that marks the places you've been  
Blood that was spilled, although not your own  
For all of these things, love will atone  
For all of those nights, you cried all alone  
For all of your tears... love will atone._

_--"There Is A River", Jars of Clay_


End file.
